Anthony’s Ramblings

Been very busy. I should update this thing more often. Wait…that sounds familiar. lol

A news crew came to my school yesterday and did a little segment about Mr. Yob’s (one of our teachers) class learning about the inauguration and what this election means to our country. They showed blips of the ever so stressful (but pretty neat/fun) school-wide Skype conference I managed (and the principal hosted) with one of our teachers who happened to fly out to go to the inauguration in person.

Check it out!

Brianna and I spent the weekend in L.A. We headed down at about 6 PM on Friday and headed back around 1 PM on Sunday. At first, I thought that the traveling-to-time-to-do-stuff would be too far in the “traveling” area, but it was actually a decent balance. Although, I wouldn’t travel much farther for a weekend’s worth of vacationing.

Friday night we arrived in Beverly Hills/Los Angeles area around 1 AM. We checked in to our hotel, which felt really creepy that late at night. There was no parking as a couple jackasses took up two spaces with their cars, so I was forced to park on a side street. I was nervous at first, but it was actually no big deal. Come light, the place and neighborhood was actually okay.

We stayed in the Beverly Inn, which is by no means a fancy hotel, but it wasn’t all that bad. We were across the street from the CBS studios, which was kinda cool. Saturday morning we took a walk and decided to eat at a place called Tart. Their portions were perfect, and their prices weren’t bad for the area as well. Afterwards, Brianna and I parted and did our own thing. What brought us to L.A. was an X-Files afiliated charity event Brianna wanted to attend. So, she did her thing and I did mine…

My first stop was my cousin Debbie’s house in Bellflower. I am very thankful for my TSX’s naviation system because with its aide I never made any major wrong moves. I felt like I dominated in L.A. traffic! Anywho…it was only supposed to take me a half hour to get from where I was in L.A. to Bellflower, but I had a little trouble at the gas station. It turns out that I pulled into a “full service” lane at the gas staiton! Without noticing, I start the process of getting gas and the attendant comes out and was like “hey, you’re in the full service lane!” I was like, “wha?!”. So, I apologized, canceled the transaction, and moved to a “self serve” pump. Here’s where the problem started. Apparently, Chevron (or at least this station) has a policy to where you must wait a certain period of time before a card with a canceled transaction can start another. After attempts at two pumps, I finally go see the attendant and he told me this. So, he rung me up for $20 worth of gas, I filled up, and I was on my way.

To get from where I was in L.A. to Bellflower, I had to take 101 to 710 to 105. It was a lot of fun. There were two things I had to get used to. 1) Carpool seems to be 24 hours, 2) Metering lights are more often on than not. Once I remembered those (and brought some patience), I was set. So Debbie and I hung out for a while, talked and whatnot. It was nice to see her. I’ll definitely do it again.

After my visit with Debbie, I went and saw my friend Sam down in Irvine. took me about a half hour to get down there which was expected. To get there, I had to take 91 to 605 to 405 to 73. Apparently, a portion of 73 is accompanied by toll, but luckily my exit was just before toll started. I got there with little problem as well. My only mistake was I turned into a UC parking lot rather than the shopping center where we were to meet. The shopping center and the UC lot I was in were maybe 500 feet apart, so it wasn’t a big deal.

I met Sam at Lee’s Sandwhiches in the university shopping center. Afterwards, he showed me around U.C. Irvine. The library has a pretty cool shelving system for material they deem less popular. The shelves are normal library shelves, but they’re on a track and slide around like an accordian. You can only access one side of a given shelf at a time. So, it saves a lot of space. The neatest part about it is that it’s computer controlled. There’s a simple control panel on the side of each shelving unit, and you can tell the system which side of which shelf you want to access, and it takes care of the rest! Sam also showed me the building he does most of his work in. He’s got a nice 30 inch Apple Cinema Display at his disposal, and a fancy lab coat with “Dr. Kaufman” embroidered on it. There were lots of neat projects spread around the building, something you just have to see for yourself. I thought it was all very neat.

After we finished with the U.C. Irvine “tour” we headed back to his apartment and “hung out”. This “hanging outage” eventually turned into something geeky. Sam decided to play One by U2 on his guitar and he wanted me to sing. Me, having zero singing voice, obviously didn’t want to sing. I jokingly suggested that the computer can sing for me, and it lead to this…

U2botic – One

It’s just a short 10 second clip that we whipped up in like 10-15 minutes. We didn’t have time to fine tune it as I was due back to Beverly Hills by the time the idea exploded. It was a lot of fun hanging out with Sam. Hopefully we’ll do it again!

Sunday, Brianna and I decided to check out the Santa Monica Pier. It wasn’t as exciting as we thought it would be, but it was neat nevertheless. If the weather was better (it was overcast when we were there) I’m sure the experience would’ve been better, too. We stopped at a local Denny’s to get a bite to eat and then we hit the road. Highways 10 to 405 to 5 to 152 to 101 to 85 to 17, all over the course of 340 miles.

All in all, it was fun!

A few weeks ago Jag, my black lab, had stopped eating or drinking. He was taken to the vet and they kept him for a few days to nourish him back to life. We were given prescription dog food, prescription treats, and very strict feeding guidelines. Everything was going well until last Wednesday. Mom had told me that he wasn’t eating like usual, but I brushed it off. I got a phone call Sunday morning from my dad. He said it’s time. So, I rushed to my parents house in the Central Valley (about a 2 hour drive from my place in San Jose) so I could see him before he was put down. I decided to spend the night and go with him to the vet in the morning. So, I spent 95% of my time sitting/laying next to him. As the day progressed, he got worse and worse. Dad and I had to carry him whenever he wanted to go somewhere. We limited him to the back yard and the living room. Eventually, he didn’t care where he was. Before everyone settled down for the night, Mom and I carried him into the house. I decided to sleep with him, which was the best decision I made. Of course, I couldn’t sleep because the sheer thought of losing Jag kept my mind turning. So, I layed down next to him and switched between watching him and watching the TV. Time passed and his breaths became farther apart. At about 1:13 AM (early Monday morning), he stopped breathing all together and passed.

Jag was my first dog and, besides fish, my first pet loss. I never imagined that it would be this hard. He was an extraordinary dog. He was happiest when he was with the family regardless of where we were (though he did prefer being on the boat or in a car). It’s like I’ve lost a brother. He was 11 years old…it was his time.

Jag, I’m going to miss you…very much.

A friend of mine from elementary school (Cumberland, 5th grade), her dad, and their neighbor set up a really cool Christmas light display synced to music. I had known about it for a few years, but never got a chance to see it in person. Since I’ve moved back to the South Bay, I decided to check it out! Brianna, Ryan, and I drove to their house on Tangerine Avenue in Sunnyvale, tuned in, and watched it for about a half hour. It’s really cool! They use an FM transmitter to broadcast the music so people passing by can tune in, but the locals don’t get annoyed by all the music.

Along with being a holiday treat, the light display is also set up as an attraction for a food drive/donation drive for the Second Harvest food bank. If you like the display you’re encouraged to donate something (Brianna contributed $2, the only change we had), but it’s not required.

You can find out more at their website, http://severex.com.

If you’re in the area, check it out!

Got my first winter PG&E bill since I moved. It’s nowhere near as high as most, but it’s high for me. From Oakland, I’m used to $20-$25 PG&E bills in the summer and $40-$45 in the winter. This bill comes to $63.88.

I think I’m going to keep a strict ritual of setting the heater to 68 degrees when I am awake, and 62 degrees when I go to bed. I’ve been a bit lax so far. This month I’d set the heater to 63 before I go to bed, and at 68 after work when I’m home. My feet would get a little cold, so I’d bump the heater up to 70. Gotta have a toasty house when I get out of the shower, so the heater gets bumped up to 72 for that.

No more!

The heater will now be at a strict 62 degrees when asleep, turned off when I’m not home, and set to 68 when I am awake at home.

It’s been a while since I’ve last posted here. I’m not sure if much has really happened since July. Well, now that I think about it, a few things have.

First off, I’ve moved to San Jose and have been working for the Menlo Park City School District for almost 3 months now. The change has been mostly good. I really like my new job and do like living in the South Bay over the East Bay. More pay is also good.

Speaking of work, we’ve just completed the project of linking all our sites via fiber. This is VERY cool, as our sites were previously linked via T1 lines (can we say, slow?!). I’m a geek, so I have my iMac patched into the gigabit switch at my site, so I have gigabit access across the entire network. Now that this project has been completed, a very generous man on the Palo Alto Exchange board has given us permission to connect to them for Internet access. For those who don’t know, the Palo Alto Exchange (otherwise known as PAIX, or Palo Alto Internet Exchange) is a huge ISP exchange hub. This means mega bandwidth for us! We currently have a T1 out to the “cloud”, so Internet access at peak hours (typically around lunch) sucks majorly.

Other than that, my beloved PowerBook has developed a weird problem. The “F” key on the keyboard has become extremely sensitive. Barely putting any pressure on the key results in a keypress (the key doesn’t even have to move downward). This is annoying for two reasons: one, I end up getting multiple “F’s” (usually 2, but sometimes more) when I only want one, and two, “F” is on the home row, and that is where my fingers rest when I am not typing (but still have my hands on the keyboard ready to key in something). Rogue “F’s” will appear when I am using the terminal, word processor, browsing the web, or using any application that accepts text input. I haven’t attempted to take apart the key yet. It’s the only key that does this. If anybody has any ideas on what’s up, I’m open to any input!

I think this is about it. Oh, I changed the theme here. I’m feeling very minimalistic today. You like?

Update : I pried off the ‘F’ key and cleaned under it. It’s better, but still a little touchy on the lower quarter of the key. It seems that the way I type naturally doesn’t trigger the weird repeatedness, so I think I’m okay for now!

I recall making a similar post a year ago about pretty much the same thing. In any case…here goes nothing…

So, for those of you who don’t know, I applied for a job with the Menlo Park City School District in Atherton (go figure, it’s called the Menlo Park school district, but the office is in Atherton). I completed the first part of the interview process last Friday, and it went rather well..

The first part was a written exam. The exam itself wasn’t very hard, but you were only given 30 minutes and you had to answer essay questions like “Please describe DHCP addressing and static addressing, and why one would be better than the other in a given situation.” with only like 2 inches of space to write. So, I completed that as well as I could and moved on.

The second part was a hands-on exam. This involved working with the district’s Technology Director, which was a big bonus. This gave me the chance to show him some of what I know and who I am BEFORE the panel interview. This had two parts to it as well. The first part was an identification part. He handed me various hardware components and I had to identify them and describe them as well as I could. Everything was pretty standard: an RCA A/V cable, a USB cable, a fiber cable, a GBIC card, and a hard drive. However, when describing the fiber cable, I was given my first clue that I may have my foot in the door. The fiber cable he handed me was orange. I’m not 100% sure on this, but I believe that orange fiber cables usually signifies that it is a multi-mode cable. So, I stated that it was a multi-mode fiber cable. He paused for a second and asked “How do you know?”. I explained that it was orange, and that usually orange signifies multi-mode. He pauses, then goes “Huh, I may have just learned something.”

The second part to the hands-on exam was troubleshooting. He sits me at a computer that is having network connectivity problems. He states that I have 20 minutes to troubleshoot the computer, and that fixing the computer is not a requirement. He just wants to see how I troubleshoot the computer (or problem-solve). So, he hands me a sheet of paper that describes the problem. It turns out that the ethernet cable was unplugged at the back of the machine, and that the network settings were wrong (IP address, subnet mask, gateway, and DNS servers). I figured this out and fixed everything in a matter of 30 seconds. The Technology Director stares at me with this astonished look on my face. We sit there silent for what felt like 20 seconds (but was probably more like 2), and then he says “So, what exactly do you do now?!” I go into my position at Berkeley Unified, we talk some more, shake hands, and I am sent home.

So, this morning I get a phone call. It’s MPCSD and they want me back for the 2nd part of the interview! Teriffic! Now, I’m not totally sure if this is standard practice, or if the HR lady was serious, but she said I did fantastic on the testing portion of the interview. I’m going to allow that to be an ego boost and take that as a personal comment.

Portfolio, check! Supplementary questions, check! I’m ready for this interview. 3:00 PM, tomorrow. I can’t wait.

Some people ask me why I applied for the job…well, I will explain why:

If I currently stay at Berkeley USD, in 5 years I will probably be making $42-$45K a year. With MPCSD, the MINIMUM I will start at is $50K a year (or $24 an hour, 8 hours a day, 261 days a year). However, the position’s salary range is anywhere between $50-$70k a year (or $24-$35 an hour, 8 hours a day, 261 days a year), and the head of HR said it’s rare that mot people start at rock bottom. So I’d probably start around $52k…if I get the job. Now, it may sound like it’s all good, but there is one sacrifice. My Berkeley position is a 10 month position, which means I get the summer off. The MPCSD job is a 12 month job, which means I’d be working year-round. I feel the sacrifice is totally worth it!

I’m still alive.

I have decided that I’m going to start offering cheap web hosting. It’ll be a no frills “here’s some storage space, here’s a MySQL database, php support, and whatever else it takes to run this blog.” I’m not doing this to make any money, just to support this server. . For $60 a year (which comes out to $5 a month, which I think is fair), my service won’t be nearly as fancy as some of what’s out there, but I won’t have a storage limit or a bandwidth limit (unless my ISP gets mad at me…hehe).

I’m going to spruce up http://www.hhsn.net/ up a little to promote this.

There will be more details as I think of them.

What do you think?

I’m debating re-registering blogy.org (it’ll be due in July). So, as a precaution, I have moved the blog to http://blog.hhsn.net (blogy.org and www.blogy.org properly redirects for now).

I may start posting crap to this someday, you knever know!

Is this thing worth keeping alive?

I highly doubt anything exciting enough happens in my personal life to attract many readers. I don’t really have the knowledge or expertise to maintain dialog about interesting subjects (at least I don’t think I do). I wanted this thing to be my geekblog, but I really haven’t been doing much outside of the scope of work. The only reason I keep this up is, well, it’s something for my server to serve. Other than jabber on my hhsn.net domain (which like 2 people use, and frankly it can be unstable at times), my dad’s friend’s business website (which sucks…he’s building it himself), space for some of my friends to store stuff, and this blog…I’ve got nothing.

I want to build a website. I have the itch to buy mytsx.net and build a webpage about my car similar to what I did for my former T-Bird (which I’m not going to renew since I gave the car to my dad). Except, I wanted to take it a little further. Possibly offer a little webspace for my fellow TSX enthusiasts, and MAYBE a forum.

All of my domains expire sometime this year. I’m debating renewing both blogy.org and hhsn.net. I would like ideas on more versatile domain names, so perhaps I could condense and save a few bucks (blog.coolassdomainname.com or whatever).

Eh, this thing isn’t hurtin’ anyone. I’ll leave it up for whenever I feel like geekbloggin’ or whatever.

This is an e-mail from my mom that struck me as funny.
 

1. If you are choking on an ice cube, don’t panic. Simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat and presto. The blockage will be almost instantly removed.
    
2. Clumsy? Avoid cutting yourself while slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold them while you chop away.
    
3. Avoid arguments with the Mrs. about lifting the toilet seat by simply using the sink.
    
4. For high blood pressure sufferers: Simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure in your veins. Remember to use a timer!
    
5. A mouse trap placed on top of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
    
6. If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives, then you will be too afraid to cough.
    
7. Have a bad toothache? Smash your thumb with a hammer and you will forget about the toothache.

Sometimes, we just need to remember what the rules of life really are.

You only need two tools: WD-40 and Duct Tape.

If it doesn’t move and should, use the WD-40.

If it shouldn’t move and does, use the duct tape.

And finally…..Remember: Everyone seems normal until you get to know them. One out of every four people suffer from a mental disorder. If you have three friends, and none of them have a problem…well, you do the math.

Just thought you’d wanna know.

I haven’t been sick like this in quite a few years. I usually get one or two small annoying colds a year; nothing that slows me down. However, this one is quite different. I constantly have a slight headache (if I’m not lying down), I cough a lot, my nose and head go from clogged to unclogged every 15 seconds, and my whole body is generally achey.

Yay!

My dad was pondeirng purchasing some fancy software to record his LPs to CD. I told him not to waste his money. With a couple extra steps (and $0 spent), Audacity may do what he wants. So I showed him the semi-complicated mess on how to connect his laptop to his turntable.

• Turntable connects to the Receiver’s Phono jacks.
• The lapop’s Line-In connects to the Receiver’s Tape Out (or Record Out)
• The laptop’s Line-Out connects to the Receiver’s Tape In.
• Select the proper recording source on the laptop.
• Adjust record levels on the laptop so that the peak volume in doesn’t exceed max threshold.

This works, and works extremely well. You can record and playback without having to swap anything (except pressing Tape on the receiver when wanting to hear the laptop, and pressing Phono on the Receiver when wanting to record/hear the LP).

I record the first side of an LP and play around with it in Audacity. I have found the easiest way to filter out most of the “snap, crackle, and pop” associated with LPs.

1. Make sure you have a good portion of silence where the LP is playing but there isn’t any music. You need a sample of the “snap, crackle, and pop”.
2. Apply the Click Removal filter to the entire recording. You may play with this filter’s adjustments if you wish, but I just left them at their defaults.
3. Find a section of silence that has the most “crap” in it. You only need a few seconds. Highlight this section, open the Noise Removal filter, and click ‘Get Noise Profile’.
4. Highlight the entire recording, open the Noise Removal filter, and click ‘Remove Noise’

The recording won’t be perfect, but it’ll be a heck of a lot better than it was! If you are a perfectionist, you can tweak with the recording some more. However, my dad and I have been satisfied with the results by just doing the above. (It’s his project, so I’ll let him do watever ).

Samples:

Original – 128kbps MP3 – 4.6 MB
Edited – 128kbps MP3 – 4.6 MB

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken or turkey
• 1 large lemon, cut into halves
• Sprig of rosemary
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Butter or olive oil, whichever you prefer

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Rub butter or oil over the skin of the chicken/turkey until it is completely coated.
3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and any other seasonings you prefer.
4. Take a knife and gently separate the skin from the breast meat.
5. Slide lemon halves under the skin with the peel side up, one on each side. This way the juice from the lemon will release into the breasts.
6. Place sprig of rosemary into the chicken/turkey.
7. Cover and bake for 30-45 minutes.
8. Remove cover and continue to roast until juices run clear, basting every 15-20 minutes.

If you’ve followed these steps correctly, your chicken/turkey should look like the one in the picture below.

Bon Appetit!

This was e-mailed to me a few days ago…

1. A man comes into the ER and yells, “My wife’s going to have her baby in
   the cab!” I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady’s dress, and began to take off her underwear. Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs -and I was in the wrong one.

   Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald, San Antonio, TX.

2. At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient’s anterior chest wall. “Big breaths,” I instructed. “Yes, they used to be,” replied the patient.

   Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes, Seattle, WA

3. One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I told a wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct. Not more than five minutes later, I heard her reporting to the rest of the family that he had died of a “massive internal fart.”

   Submitted by Dr. Susan Steinberg, Manitoba, Canada

4. During a patient’s two week follow-up appointment with his cardiologist, he informed me, his doctor, that he was having trouble with one of his medications. “Which one?” I asked “The patch ?”. The nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours and now I’m running out of places to put it!” I had him quickly undress and discovered what I hoped I wouldn’t see. Yes, the man had over fifty patches on his body! Now, the instructions include removal of the old patch before applying a new one.

   Submitted by Dr. Rebecca St. Clair, Norfolk, VA

5. While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient, I asked, “How long have you been bedridden?” After a look of complete confusion she answered…”Why, not for about twenty years – when my husband was alive..”

   Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson, Corvallis, OR

6. I was caring for a woman and asked, “So how’s your breakfast this morning?” “It’s very good, except for the Kentucky Jelly. I can’t seem to get used to the taste” the patient replied. I then asked to see the jelly and the woman produced a foil packet labeled “KY Jelly.”

   Submitted by Dr. Leonard Kransdorf, Detroit, MI

7. A nurse was on duty in the Emergency Room, when a young woman with purple hair styled into a punk rocker Mohawk, sporting a variety of tattoos, and wearing strange clothing, entered. It was quickly determined that the patient had acute appendicitis, so she was scheduled for immediate surgery. When she was completely disrobed on the operating table, the staff noticed that her pubic hair had been dyed green, and above it there was a tattoo that read, “Keep off the grass.”

   Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon wrote a short note on the patient’s dressing, which said, “Sorry, had to mow the lawn.”

   Submitted by RN (no name)

8. As a new, young MD doing his residency in OB, I was quite embarrassed when performing female pelvic exams. To cover my embarrassment I had unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly. The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing and further embarrassing me. I looked up from my work and sheepishly said, “I’m sorry, was I tickling you?” She replied, “No doctor, but the song you were whistling was,

   “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener.”

   Dr. wouldn’t submit his name

A few days before Halloween, I was forwarded some pretty cool pictures of carved pumpkins. Check ‘em out:

             

Do not drink a Rockstar at 10 PM. It’s why I am wide awake now. Normally these “energy drinks” don’t have much affect on me, but this one sure did.

I was working on my Dell Inspiron 5150. The machine appeared to work just fine. I decided to wipe the drive and install Microsoft Windows Vista RC1. During the install process, random files would appear to be corrupt and wouldn’t copy from the installation CD. I figured that this was an issue with my copy of Vista and didn’t think much of it. So, I decided to install Xubuntu. The installation process went just fine, but it would not boot. I didn’t think much of it and decided to put Windows XP back on it. When installing Windows XP, I was encountering similar issues. Eventually, it would refuse to repartition my hard drive, claiming that it could not access the drive. Everything pointed to hard drive failure, and I was so sure that was the problem. However, I had forgotten about the dead wireless card sitting in the miniPCI slot. I removed the card, and volla! The problems disappeared! Except…I still cannot install Vista. I think my ISO is corrupted or I have a bad burn or something.